My Amazing Hubby

I have to take a minute to brag about Mark, 'cause I know he won't do it himself.

A few minutes ago, Mark made a presentation at a software conference. "Wow, really, Mark?" you may ask (because if you actually know Mark you would realize that public speaking is not one of his passions... not even anywhere near the top). But Mark has been really trying hard to be more outgoing in his professional life, and when he heard about the conference a few months ago, he asked the company hosting if he could speak on a topic he enjoys (a technical software topic that is completely over my head). They loved his topic, and asked him to present!

Mark had to prepare 40 minutes of presentation, to be followed by 20 minutes Q&A. Earlier this week, he presented it to his work group, and it was about an hour long, so he cut some out for today. True to Mark's personality, he created some one-of-a-kind drawings to illustrate his technical points (the drawings are humorous, of course). I love the picture he drew of himself - I'll try to steal a copy from him tonight to post it. He was told they were estimating more than 100 for his presentation. Wow.

I haven't heard from Mark yet, so I have no idea how the presentation went. What I do know is I am extremely proud of him for stepping so far out of his comfort zone (we're talking different galaxies here, people). He's always trying to improve himself, which is admirable. He's so amazing!

And you'd better step off, ladies. He's MY man. ;)

As promised, my husband the geek :)

Updated by Mark to add:

*whew* weeks of working on slides, doing research, and trying to convince myself that I wasn't crazy for trying this all came to today. This morning, when I arrived at the conference, I was really really nervous. I even had to skip out on the yummy muffins for breakfast, because I wasn't sure I would actually keep them down.

During the keynote, I calmed down a lot. The speaker was awesome! He completely made me excited to be part of this whole event. The keynote was followed by four other presentations (where I skipped from "track" to "track", learning about things that were interesting to me. Most of them were very good... one of them made me think "at least I won't be the worst speaker here... there's *no way* I can look that unprepared."

Finally, it was time for me to do my talk. I went to the room where my presentation was scheduled and booted up my laptop. While it booted, I chatted with the guy who was going to be introducing me and a few early-arrivers. They laughed when I started OpenOffice.org Impress instead of Microsoft PowerPoint (OOo Impress is an open source alternative to MS PowerPoint... my talk was about free and open source in embedded software)... Apparently I was the only speaker at the conference not using PowerPoint, and the organizers (including the guy who was about to introduce me) had made bets as to if I would be using OpenOffice.org based on my presentation subject. Apparently he won.

This helped to drain out the rest of my nervousness. As people trickled in, I continued to just chat. People wanted to know all about my experiences at SGS. As I chatted about it, a sudden realization hit me: I was now looking at a room of fifty-ish people and they were interested in what I was saying.

The rest came easy.

The organizer gave me a little intro, which consisted of a recap of what we had just been talking about instead of what he had prepared (including the fact that he had won the bet). Then it was my turn.

Time flies.

After practicing my presentation in front of some coworkers earlier in the week, I had realized that I had about twice as much material as I needed. Instead of hacking half of it out (my first reaction), I had instead pushed the most important stuff into the front, and then added a slide that listed the other topics. So halfway through my presentation, I came to that slide and I said, "I only have twenty minutes more to talk, and I have experience in these areas. What are you most interested in hearing about?"

I am so glad that I chose to do it this way. It immediately turned the rest of the presentation into a customized interactive presentation. People asked lots of questions, we skipped from topic to topic, getting as detailed as anyone cared to discuss. As the organizer gave me the five minute sign, I realized that I was actually disappointed that it was almost over. I was having fun.

Then it's done. People clap and I pack up my laptop and throw it in my bag. As I stand back up, I am surprised to see about fifteen people around me. I just start to chat. One after another, they ask questions, tell me related stories, request my email. As I'm chatting with the last in line, I realize that I'm already late for the next presentation that I had planned to see. We exchange emails, and I'm off.

How cool is that?